Direct mail tips

Saturday, May 26, 2007

How to Write an Email

If you want to make money from internet marketing you have to know how to write an email. Most people have no idea how to do so, and simply write a message and have no idea how to use the subject line to catch the eye.

Most people get a large number of emails daily. For some this can be twenty or more, and for others several hundred. If you opened your email inbox and found several pages of emails, which is not unusual in internet marketing, then what would you do? Would you start at the top and open every one, or would you go the bottom and open every one from there, because then you would be dealing with them in the order in which they arrived.

Of course not!

Neither would I, or anybody else. Every person in that situation would scan down their emails. Some will check the sender, looking for a familiar name and others will keep an eye on the subject line. The intelligent ones, and experienced internet marketers, will look at both. The important word is 'scan'. It is a quick flick of the eye down the list. If you don't do something to catch that eye, it will scan down past yours too.

The first lesson to learn in writing emails is to write a compelling subject line that catches the eye. And do you know what catches people's eye more that anything else? Seeing their own name! That's right. If somebody sees their name in the subject line of an email, they will stop. They will stop and read the line, but if all that says is "John, here's a good way to make money" then the reader will carry on down the list.

What you want is something like "John, Did You Miss This Last Time?" or "Mary, This Tip Will Cost Nothing". You might think of something better. However, having caught their eye with their name, you must retain their interest. You must make them WANT to open that email, and find out what is inside. Word it in any way you want, but FORCE them to open it.

Now the email is opened, what do they see? "Hello Anne, thanks for opening the email. I think you might be interested in this". What would you do if you saw that? On the other hand, what about "Hi Anne, Here's a free tip that will make you money, but not only that, will show you how to make even more." Or, "Hello Mark, How would you like to make $500 a week and pay nothing till you were doing it?"

Don't make offers like "Make $5000 every week with my great plan". Nobody will believe it, but they might believe $500 a week. That's believable and attainable, but very few people make $5000 every week, and if they did, they wouldn't tell you how they did it unless their system was now obsolete, like all the web page and article generation software that Google got wise to.

Use a title in your email, and use it to set an achievable goal and indicate to the reader that you can show them how to attain that. Then you have to deliver. Your first two or three sentences must back up what you offer and indicate how it could be achieved. Not the detail – you can't do that in three sentences – but in general. Having done that, you must expand on it.

So let's recap on what you have done so far to get your email opened, read and then attract the interest of the reader.

Your Subject Line contains a word that stops the eye scan. That is usually their name. It then contains compelling content to force them to continue to read. Once they have read your subject line, they have to open the email and they see your headline. It makes them an offer difficult to refuse, because it costs them nothing. You are not asking for money. So they read more to make sure that is true, and they find it is. They like what they are reading. So what next?

A CALL TO ACTION! That is what's next. Tell them exactly what to do to get the information they want. Don't give them too much more to read, because they have another few pages of emails to get through, so let them click for information. FREE information that will be sent to them later, when they have finished with today's emails. An opt-in form will let you send the details.

That is how to get emails read and how to get them responded to. Learn it and put it into practice. You might be able to improve on the advice, but that is in essence how to write an email, get it opened and get it read.

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